1 day Ago By Neil McCormick
There’s a new Fab Four in town: Harris, Paul, Joseph and Barry. With the core cast of Sam Mendes’s forthcoming quartet of Beatles biopics confirmed, expected to be released in April, 2028, a whole new slew of questions come into focus. The casting of actors as famous music stars is always contentious.
These are faces, personas and voices burned into public consciousness, with the Beatles being arguably some of the most universally familiar and beloved figures of modern times. Are we ready to accept Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr? The first cast photos don’t suggest the rebirth of the world’s greatest band so much as the launch of a new male modelling agency. The Fab Four are being brought to the big screen by Sam Mendes.
Credit: Sony Pictures With Quinn at 31, the youngest Beatle has been cast as one of the oldest. The actors’ ages suggest the film’s focus is unlikely to be on the origins of the Beatles. Harrison was only 27 when the Beatles broke up.
Irish star Barry Keoghan (33) is already four years older than Ringo was in 1970 (and, let’s be honest, looks every year of it). Here are five big questions we have about the Beatles biopics. 1.
What era will the films be set in? We know that director Sam Mendes plans to make four intersecting biopics, focusing on each of the Beatles in turn, to be released at the same time. What would be astounding is if each film was made in a different style tailored to its subject, arty cinéma vérité for Lennon, sumptuous historical biopic for McCartney, mystic surrealism for Harrison and a kid’s cartoon for Starr. The ages of the cast members might imply a drama of the last days of the Beatles.
Dickinson is 28 and Mescal 29, close to the ages Lennon and McCartney were during the recording of Abbey Road in 1969, their final sessions together (although Let It B e was released in 1970, after the split). It is more likely that the films will follow a fairly standard biopic narrative covering the years from 1960 (when the Beatles first went to Hamburg), perhaps in a tale set at the end of the Sixties peppered with flashbacks. Potentially, each of the four characters could lead us through consecutive stages of the Beatles journey, but this too seems unlikely since screenwriter Peter Straughan ( Wolf Hall , Conclave ), who is working specifically on the George Harrison film, suggested the film quartet would involve “certain famous scenes from their lives” told from different points of view.
Intriguingly, Straughan claimed the writers were all “firewalled off from each other” with only Mendes knowing how it ties together. The cast of the Beatles biopics, from left, Paul Mescal Joseph Quinn, Barry Keoghan, and Harris Dickinson in Las Vegas on Monday. Credit: AP 2.
Will the actors do their own singing and playing? The answer to that has to be yeah, yeah, yeah. When Ringo let it slip last year that Barry Keoghan had been cast, he said “I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons” then jokingly added (in a reference to his own individualistic and untrained style) “I hope not too many.” McCartney would present a challenge for almost any vocalist though.
In his prime, he commanded one of the widest ranges ever heard in popular music, spanning five octaves and all of it carrying weight and tone. Lennon’s recordings span close to three octaves by comparison, Harrison had a slightly more restricted 2.5 octave range and I’m not convinced Ringo even has an octave.
What goes unspoken in all the rave reviews of singing actors is how much technology is available to enhance vocals, from autotuning to AI replication. 3. What is the source material? You could probably fill the Albert Hall with writings on the subjects of the Beatles.
There must have been thousands of books, hundreds of thousands of magazine articles, hundreds of films and documentaries and potentially millions of related articles and interviews about the band at the epicentre one of the most thoroughly documented culture moments in modern history. The Beatles Bible website offers a day-to-day account of their activities from birth to the present. There are intricate tomes citing every minute detail of every recording session.
It is not known if Mendes is citing any particular sources. His hands might be tied by the fact that McCartney, Starr and the estates of Lennon and Harrison have sanctioned this movie, which suggests it will stick to official storylines, such as autobiographies, Apple films and publications and the Beatles Anthology material. Which leads to another – and perhaps the crucial – question .
.. 4.
How honest will it be? Anyone expecting a searing no-holds-barred account of the Beatles’ rise and disintegration is bound to be disappointed. Mendes is a strong storyteller who won’t shy from interpersonal conflict, but as an officially endorsed biopic there is no chance it will do anything that might damage the Beatles brand. Particularly given that the most fiercely honest Beatle is not around to influence proceedings.
In later interviews, Lennon frequently compared life in the Beatles to Frederico Fellini’s transgressive orgiastic Roman epic Satyricon . The films will surely have to hint at the sex, drugs and rock and roll behind the scenes to avoid accusations of sanitisation, but it is safe to assume the underlying message will ally itself with Ringo’s frequent assertion that the story of the Beatles is all about “four guys that loved each other.” 5.
Who else is in the cast? The most significant other characters in the Beatles tale are surely manager Brian Epstein, producer George Martin, and various wives and girlfriends. White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood has apparently snagged the juicy role of Pattie Harrison (nee Boyd), which will involve a love triangle with Eric Clapton. Given the Beatles’ status at the white-hot centre of 1960s pop culture in swinging London, expect cameos for actors playing Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards and every other British pop icon of the era, with potential walk-on roles for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.
.
